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arachnophobia

Arrrgh, I hate spiders. It’s not a fully blown phobia but it is a reaction that goes beyond logic. Arrgh spider!! Must get it out of here KILL KILL Arrrrgh! Possibly accompanied by involuntary squeaking noises (on my part, not the spider).

I could happily live without every MMO designer in existence being almost as infatuated with giant spiders as they are with bears and pigs. Or as my husband said about Tarren Mill: Who would have guessed that bears and giant spiders could live together in such harmony?

I also hate tanking the giant spider bosses, especially if they look remotely realistic. I just don’t like it.

My raid are of course sympathetic to my personal bane and support me by giggling madly every time I squeak in horror at seeing a bunch of teeny spiders hurtling down a ramp towards me. In WoW, you can also use a reagent (Baby Spice, don’t ask) to miniaturise players and NPCs and one of our rogues who also hates spiders is very sweet and shrinks the really huge ones for me.

Yes, yes, it’s all daft. But I still don’t like spiders.

Bear with me, the spider fixation is relevant this week because we got the Arachnophobia achievement (clear the spider wing in Naxx in under 20 mins) on both 25 man and 10 man. More on the tactics for this at the end.

Summary: 25 Man

Most important part: I won my bet with the raid leader from last week. We did one shot Thaddius. I had actually forgotten about the bet until one of our mages reminded me. I passed this on to the raid leader, she said (and I quote), “Might have guessed that dweeb would stitch me up,” and we agreed that instead of 100g I’d send her a frozen orb and she could make me some leg armour.

We had a great night on Wednesday. Cleared out the Spider, Plague, and Construct wings and also one-shotted Instructor Razuvious with two priest-tanks who had not done the mind control before. It’s very obvious that our dps has increased across the board, a couple of weeks of good raids in a dungeon full of bosses will do that for you.

They cleared out the rest of the instance on Thursday and went on to take a few pot shots at Malygos, getting him to phase 3 a couple of times.

Regardless of deep wounds nerfs, our fury warrior still tops the meters in most fights. He’ll be a terror when he actually does get a weapon upgrade from the raids.

In other notes, I hate tanking trash alongside a paladin. Yes I have good AE snap aggro but after a few seconds the mobs all glom back onto him. Was bitching with one of the ferals about this, she complains also that paladins are ‘greedy’ tanks. Must surely be time for consecration to get nerfed soon.

Summary: 10 man

Another super run this Saturday night which cleared Naxxramas in under 4 hours. We knocked out a few more achievements: Arachnophobia, Safety Dance, 100 Club. Only one wipe on Sapphiron due to someone getting ice blocked too near the centre.

Despite us making the best speed that we ever have, I didn’t feel entirely happy with the run. People were being a little messy with some of the trash pulls, there were deaths on trash that could have been avoided and I didn’t feel people in general were as focussed as they had been in the past.

We also missed the Patchwerk achievement by 19s. I think this will happen eventually as people gear up but it’s hard not to feel that if we’d have any other tank than a warrior, we could probably have made it (warriors do less damage while tanking than the other tanks, or at least I do.)

Have decided to focus next week on more of the ‘control’ achievements, depending if the signups support it. I’d like to aim for the achievement where you have to kill all four horsemen at the same time. Have informed people of this on guild bboards, which should keep them happily theorycrafting all week.

HOWTO: Arachnophobia

This achievement is for a speed run. You have to kill Maexxna in under 20 minutes from when you pulled Anub’Rekhan. Tactics are the same for 10 man as for 25 man. There’s not really a specific strategy for this, instead a few pointers to keep things moving:

Speed up the looting. We actually left the loot on the corpses and ran back after we’d cleared the wing to sort it out. They stay there for ages.

Brute force on Faerlina. Either kill the adds first or ignore them but don’t wait for her enrages.

Sort out the assignments in advance. Everyone should know who is tanking which boss and what the healing assignments on the boss fights are before you start.

Chain pulling the trash. You have 2-3 tanks, keep moving. By the time you do this achievement you should know roughly where the trash packs are and where the patrols might be. As a tank, keep an eye on what the other tanks are doing, and as soon as you’re free go pull something.

Solid dps. It’s not a difficult achievement but in order to keep some speed up you’ll probably want your dps to be making 2k+.